A wide variety of IMDs have been developed in order to monitor patient conditions and deliver therapy to the patient. An IMD typically includes a hermetically sealed housing coupled to one or more leads that are surgically implanted inside a patient for sensing conditions or for administering therapy. The IMD may provide therapeutic stimulation to the patient or may deliver drugs or agents to the patient. Alternatively or additionally, the IMD may have sensing or monitoring capabilities. For example, the IMD may sense information within a patient and store the sensed information for subsequent analysis. In some cases, the sensed information may be used directly by the IMD to adjust or control the therapy that is delivered to the patent. Telemetry is used to communicate sensed information from the IMD to an external medical device so that analysis of the sensed information can be performed. Telemetry is further used to communicate information or instructions from external medical devices to the IMD. The IMD includes a telemetry module for performing such telemetry.
Special frequency bands have been allocated for implantable medical devices using RF telemetry, such as the MICS (Medical Implantable Communication Service) band ranging from 402-405 MHz and the MEDS (Medical Electronic Data Service) band that extends the range to 401-406 MHz. The limited battery capacity in IMDs presents a challenge in operating a RF transceiver at such frequencies. One manner employed to conserve power in an IMD is to maintain the IMD in an off state and operate in the so-called “sniff” mode. This means that the complete receiver RF portion of the device is turned on for a limited period of time (e.g. 10 milliseconds) during which time the device listens to see if there are any transmitters active in the vicinity wanting to make contact with the IMD. By duty cycling the on (sniff) time heavily with the off time a considerable power saving can be achieved. The signals received during these sniff operations are referred to as wake-up signals that direct the IMD to power on various components to communicate with the external medical device.